Mark Clodi - Undead Advantage, a Zombie Chronicles Novel

He made it to the Mike's Club without any further difficulty, meeting his wife's cousin in the parking lot, who pointed him towards the side of the store, where a garage bay door opened up when he approached. He drove the Fiesta in and faster than any zombie Juan had seen so far he was pulled out of the car when it stopped and into his wife's embrace. She kept rubbing his hair and checking his body for wounds and then would stop and hug him, before checking him yet again. Juan's neighbor, Alonzo, was pulling Hank out of the side door, yelling for the doctor and nurse as he did so. Finally seeing this Nanci left Juan and went to Hank's side nervously. The two children were pulled out and distributed among the women and older girls, and they were crying again. Kevin tried to stand off on his own, not used to this sort of display, but he was pulled in by the group and hugged like everyone else, whether he wanted to be or not.

A few minutes later a group of men came through the service door from the main area of the Mike's Club, they had rifles and other assorted pistols and Juan looked up at them anxiously, trying to judge their mood. The leader caught Juan's eye and tilted his head off to the side of the garage, Juan edged that direction and the man, Jack, said, "Hey Juan, good to see you man!"

Jack was a neighbor of Juan's, he had the look of a person who had been ridden hard and put away wet, he was about thirty four years old, give or take a year, was almost six feet tall. Jack had dark brown hair, brown eyes, fairly smooth skin and usually sported an unshaven look that was popular in the early eighties. He was also slightly overweight, it showed a lot more in his face and legs than around his belly, one thing Juan noted was that the usual dark bags of skin under his eyes were not there. He had moved into the neighborhood years ago and professed to be a student at Denver University, "A Law student", Juan thought. Eventually he got too old to be a student anymore and survived on 'odd jobs', which probably translated as selling quarter bags at the local college. The neighbors knew he was dealer and tolerated him for two reasons, first after a little discussion with him about keeping up his yard, he complied and kept it up as nice as everyone else's and second, another part of the same 'keep your yard clean' talk, Jack agreed not to sell out of his house. Once those conditions were met everyone got along a lot nicer, heck they had even passed the hat to bail him out when he got caught with two ounces in a bust. Juan even broke into his house and cleared out his real stash before the cops came to search for it. Being a good neighbor sometimes required a little sacrifice. Among other things Jack was not big on lying, early on, for instance, when Juan had asked him if he sold drugs, he had just looked at Juan nodded and said, "Yeah, a man's gotta make a living." While they never became really good friends, Juan had figured out where Jack kept his stash, no one was more surprised than Jack when the police turned up nothing in their search. It ended up being the only thing that kept Jack out of prison and he had been trying to show his gratitude ever since, he didn't even begrudge the fact that almost two kilos of the finest weed ever grown had simply disappeared.

"Juan. Bad mother, that guy on the bike." said Jack.

"Sì. You get him?"

"No he got away, we must have hit him ten, twelve times, he was fast, got his bike turned up onto the sidewalk and still we shot at him. I know we got his bike a couple times too, it was smoking pretty bad, and both tires were flat, but he somehow kept it up and moving until he was a couple blocks back the way he had come, then he dumped it and ran off. Limping, but alive. Who was he?"

"'Dave', a bad one, pretty strong. I think we pissed him off by not letting him kill us." Juan looked over to see the doc arrive and start looking over Hank on the ground. "Mal suerte that you didn't get him, he needed getting."

The doc was an older man, probably fifty five or sixty years old, he had gray hair that was combed over the top of his head, his outfit was completed with a white doctor's coat and a stethoscope around his neck. His body was pretty lean, not quite gaunt, but maybe only a day or two away from having that description. His gray hair matched his slate colored eyes, his tan skin did not, liver spots ran up from his arms and over his head, when Juan had met him, only yesterday, the Doc had explained that he was an avid golfer. There was no real problem with the Doc that Juan could put his finger on, but he made Juan uneasy, for some reason he reminded Juan of Jack. Seeing the two of them together in the same room did not make Juan think they were related, but there was something there. The nurse, Beth, had been with the doctor when Juan and Hank came across them. They had been boarded up in the clinic, but had just been rescued by some other good Samaritans. Then there were the kids, a bunch of teens and younger who had a bunch of old fashioned swords and other medieval equipment. The first people, who cleared off the zombies around the clinic, had opted to head west alone after one of their relatives and the kids too, had gone looking for their parents. Hank was against splitting the group up, but he couldn't make everyone stick together either. He hoped that Max and his friends were okay and he also hoped that Michael and the kids he was with would find their way to the club soon too. The doc and his nurse agreed to come to the club and help out, so Hank and Juan had loaded up their car with the extra guns and ammo from the gun shop they had raided.

Beth was a woman who reminded Juan of a matron mother from an old movie he had seen once, she was pretty good sized, not fat, but literally 'big boned', her huge, manly frame was bigger than Juan, seeing Juan looking at her she flashed him a quick smile by way of greeting. He smiled back, he always had gotten on with less attractive women, other than his wife, a curse he supposed, God's way of making sure he did not stray off the very narrow path of fidelity. Beth was a blond, with blue eyes, shoulder length hair and fairly pale skin, like that of a vampire. She wore a white nurses uniform, from the shoes, pants and up to the shirt, she stopped just shy of the whole get up, there was not a cute little nurses cap on her head.

"Hank get bit?" Jack asked Juan, bringing him back in the present.

"No." said Juan, mortified at the very thought, "I Just got into a little fight with Dave."

Jack's eyebrows went up, "Really? Then I guess Hank is a pretty bad mother fucker himself, eh? You get into it with Dave, Juan?"

Juan laughed a little, thinking of how the rumors would now start about Hank fighting Dave, then said, "No señor, barely a scratch on me. I stayed behind a gun and left the punching to Hank. But I did shoot Dave, so did Hank. Dave has a way of not dying, you know?"

"I could see that. Is this Dave gonna be trouble?"

Juan thought about it for a moment then said, "Yeah, I think so. We better make sure the boys keep a good watch. He almost got Hank's gun too, if he gets a gun we could have more trouble. The others are going to have to start keeping their heads down. Anyone else wander in? Some kids with swords? A cop maybe?"

"A cop? No, no one like that, but this place has been growing, we have probably a couple hundred people hear now. Up from what? The eighty we brought with us? It ain't gonna hold us all much longer. Doc figured that out when I spoke to him about you and Hank last night. He thought we should move to a bigger place, a hospital, they have food there, lots of rooms, places for people to shower, kind of like a hotel, only better able to deal with large amounts of people. We'll have to talk later with you and Hank, if he can. We need to get organized. I don't think anyone is coming for us and we need some leaders with authority to get things done."